Sunday, August 21, 2011

This is the third post on Rick Perry’s 2010 book Fed Up! (First post here, second post here). Last post tomorrow.

Chapter 4 (“Washington is Bankrupting America”) is about debt debt debt, spending spending spending. It doesn’t say anything you haven’t heard from every Tea Bagger for the last umpteen months.

“Emboldened by the brazen [Perry’s use of adjectives is fun] abandonment of limited government under the New Deal and subsequent regimes [regimes!], from the Great Society to the current administration, Washington is steering America down a path to destruction.” Oh noes!

Social Security has “finally reached its tipping point. No more free lunch.” Did you know Social Security has been a free lunch up until now? Well it has, evidently. Perry likes to use the term “illegal Ponzi scheme” to describe it. “Deceptive accounting has hoodwinked the American public into thinking that Social Security is a retirement system and financially sound, when clearly it is not.” The Social Security Trust Fund “must be somewhere in Al Gore’s lockbox, right next to his notes from inventing the Internet and that global cooling data he doesn’t want anyone to see.”

Chapter 5 (“No American Left Alone: Health Care, Education, the Environment, and the Tyranny of the Modern Administrative State”) is about the evils of the feds telling states what to do.

CECI N’EST PAS HYPERBOLE: Obamacare “will make any current bureaucracy seem trivial and will destroy our nation’s health care system in the process.” He adds, “This is not hyperbole”.

And yes, he insists, there are death panels.

He doesn’t like No Child Left Behind. “The academic standards of Texas are not for sale. We will retain our sovereign authority to decide how to educate our children.” If, Rick, I think you meant to say if.

The EPA is “destroying federalism and individuals’ ability to make their own economic decisions.” Texas deals with air pollution just fine. Al Gore/global warming is “all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.” Weight, geddit? Cuz Al Gore is fat.

Chapter 6 (“Nine Unelected Judges Tell Us How to Live”) is about how the Supreme Court “arrogantly chooses to hide behind the Constitution while it implements its own policy choices” and forces Texas to “kiss the ring of the Court.” Which just sounds dirty.

If Perry sees a very, very limited legitimate role for the federal government, I’m not sure I saw any limits he accepts on the states “telling us how to live.” He complains that the Supreme Court forced on Texas legalized abortions, having to educate the children of illegal aliens, legalized sodomy, no prayers at football games, legalized contraception etc. And it has the nerve to tell Texas not to execute the people it wants to execute.

Perry’s not really saying that Texas should ban sodomy and contraception – that’s not the subject of the book – but he sure isn’t saying that it shouldn’t and thinks that these are things for the states, or as he puts it, “the people,” to determine.

AND WE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT IF IT WEREN’T FOR YOU MEDDLING STATISTS: “We Texans like our guns. We don’t like meddlesome statists who want to infringe on our right to keep and bear them.”

Chapter 7 (“The Federal Government Fiddles: Ignoring National Security, Immigration, and the Enumerated Powers”) argues that the feds aren’t doing the few things Perry thinks they should do, especially their “unwillingness to secure our nation’s border.” Note the singular: Perry’s forgotten that the US has more than one border.

Mexican drug cartels are terrorists, terrorists I tell you!

THE WRONG KIND OF EXPLOSION, I GUESS: We’re not spending enough on the military, because of “the explosion of entitlement spending”

Obama’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review spent a full three pages on climate change. A full three pages!